As the world's major tuna resource owners we as people of the PNA or Pacifical island countries have the obligation to manage and conserve the tuna stocks. Our forefathers were guardians of our marine resources today . Now we bear the responsibility on the sustainability of our tuna stocks and to preserve them. Not only for the future of our people and our children, but also as an important food source our world's population and consumers all over the world.

Pacifical countries are bearing an enormous cost of managing their resources, they employ thousands of scientists, on-board observers, and officials. They operate advanced vessel satellite-monitoring systems, run sophisticated database systems, to register, monitor and manage the exact tuna catches within their waters. To assure that no illegal fishing takes place and all regulations are met, because this fishery is in our economic zone (EEZ), so we can do this with confidence.

For most of our countries tuna is the most important and often the only major source of income. However today only a very small part of the economic benefits of tuna flow back to the Pacifical countries.

Currently one day of purse seine fishing costs for one vessel costs between USD 8000 to USD 12000 in license fees. Within that day a boat catches on average 30 M/T of tuna, which at a worth of USD 1950 per metric ton, will fetch a total market value of Usd 58,500 landed in Bangkok. This means that our people only collect about 11% - of which we will have to pay all our management charges, and support our vulnerable economies. The real profits all flow off shore.

To become more involved in catching our own tuna

Of the current 1,1 million tonnes of tuna caught our waters, almost 85% is caught by fleets from foreign nations, such as USA, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines, China and Spain. Our domestic fleet still consists of older and smaller vessels. We want to see more of our local people to start working as crews on these foreign boats, and for them to be educated and experienced to eventually run and navigate a tuna boat. We would like to see more joint ventures between local companies and governments, and foreign companies in fishing.

To process more of our tuna in our local processing plants - create more jobs

Of the current 1,1 million tonnes of tuna caught our waters, only about 55,000 mt or 5% is processed in PNA based industries.

Almost 80% of our tuna now goes to tuna canneries in Thailand, and about 15% to processing plants in South Korea, Japan, and Ecuador. Currently most investments, jobs, commerce, profits and taxes go to foreign companies and governments.

We want to create more jobs, work and income for our people, by expanding our own tuna processing industry and to establish direct relations with retailers and end consumers. This means we will have to increase the amount of tuna processed in our region to at least 25%.

To have fair working & social conditions for our people working in factories and on-board

Fishing companies catching tuna for Pacifical should provide good living and working conditions on board – which need to meet the BSCI (Business Social Compliance Initiative) and SA 8000 conditions. These conditions ensures that no child labor is used, and that crew members regularly get a chance to meet their family members.

PNA Tuna processing facilities employ local population working under conditions meeting the BSCI social Code of Conduct or SA 8000. Tuna canning plants can provide work and income to over a thousand families.

We find it important that our PNA tuna processing plants also process tuna products for our local population, since tuna is high protein and healthy food source for us, this offers foods security and saves valuable foreign exchange, now spend to buy foreign food.

BSCI code of conduct, or SA 8000 is applied to working conditions throughout the entire tuna supply chain – both on the boats and in the tuna processing plants.

How does the MSC system ensure that tuna is caught in a sustainable way?

The Marine Stewardship council certification process for fisheries to be sustainable is the most rigorous investigation into the fishing method and the stock of fish involved. Go to www.msc.org for more information on the MSC.

PNA and Pacifical have chosen to go for this highest independent global sustainability standard because we want to give the people who buy and eat our tuna, the best assurances that the highest level of sustainability is being reached within our waters, and we believe we can offer this.

The scale of the ongoing PNA MSC assessment process is extremely extensive and done by highly qualified experts who function as independent auditors. In the assessment process the PNA Office and 8 sovereign nations have been consulted repeatedly, over 26 formal consultations, over 100 interest groups invited to contribute and give their opinions and views, over 166 references cited, 220 potential tuna catching boats have been reviewed, fishing for 16 different flags states, and many scientific studies and reports have been studied and reviewed.

As a result of this MSC process during 2011, Pacifical and the PNA have taken care of every single detail related to the sustainability of the fisheries. Finally December 2011 brought positive confirmation from MSC. PNA free school skipjack and yellowfin is the first and only certified purse seine tuna fishery in the world.

The MSC certification ensures that the fish is caught in a sustainable way, by fishing on free schools of skipjack and yellowfin tuna, is never mixed in any way with fish which has been caught on FADs, or any other less sustainable tuna fishing method. The process to ensure this we call the Chain of Custody.

This Chain of Custody ensures that you will be able to trace back every fish or can of tuna back to the vessels which caught it, and if the fish was caught in a sustainable way. Pacifical will make this information available on-line for any of its customers through a tracking code on each tuna can, and the absolute assurance of MSC.

Stay up-to-date on the development of Pacifical MSC Tuna.

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